The complaint
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Mrs S’s adult daughter, Miss S, lived in south Wales. However, while staying with a friend in the south west of England, she became depressed and developed anorexia nervosa. She came under the care of Plymouth Teaching Primary Care Trust (the PCT), initially as an out-patient and then, from October 2006, as an in-patient. In October 2006 the PCT approached a consultant psychiatrist in Miss S’s home area (the Welsh Consultant) employed by Cardiff and Vale NHS Trust (the Trust) to ask him to take over her care. He declined. Miss S’s condition deteriorated further and she was referred to
the local specialist NHS eating disorders unit (the EDU). The referral was accepted, subject to funding, and an application was made to Health Commission Wales (HCW) for this. HCW refused to fund the admission, principally on the grounds that Miss S had never been assessed by the services in Wales, and because no follow-up plan had been put in place for when she was discharged. Mrs S then elected to have Miss S admitted to a private eating disorders centre, where she, together with her daughter, funded Miss S’s care.
Mrs S complained to us on behalf of Miss S that the NHS should have funded Miss S’s care. She complained that the family had been forced to take action as Miss S’s condition was serious and deteriorating, and because it appeared that the question of which NHS body was responsible for funding was unlikely to be resolved quickly. She commented that it was out of the question for Miss S to have travelled to Wales for assessment, given her poor condition. Mrs S said that because of all this, she and her daughter were forced to use their life savings to pay for private treatment.
